Nunavut could owe millions in back pay

ANNETTE BOURGEOIS

A western MLA has vowed to make Nunavut pay its share of any compensation awarded to GNWT workers to settle a dispute over pay equity.

“I would not like to see the West get stuck with the total bill if this matter is not resolved before division,” Yellowknife MLA Roy Erasmus said in the legislative assembly last week.

The territorial government and the Union of Northern Workers have been squabbling over the issue of pay equity since 1989, when the union first lodged its complained with the Human Rights Commission.

The union says the GNWT’s practice of paying female employees less that men violated the Canadian Human Rights Act. The GNWT argued that it wasn’t bound by federal legislation because it follows its own Fair Practices Act.

But a Federal Court of Appeal ruled last February that the territorial government is indeed bound by the Act. It’s estimated the GNWT could end up owing as much as $70 million in back pay.

Finance Minister John Todd responded that the issue of future compensation isn’t considered a liability and is not, therefore, part of the division plan for the territories.

Todd told the House he’s willing to settle the dispute quickly, but only if the UNW is reasonable in its demand for compensation.

“If it is affordable and equitable, I am prepared to come to the table,” Todd said. “If it is unrealistic and pie-in-the-sky, I am simply not.”

In the past two years the GNWT has cut about 1,000 jobs and nearly $200 million from its budget in an effort to eliminate its operating deficit.

“If they do not come to the table with affordability, what do you want me to do? Lay off another 1,000 people?,” Todd said.

“If it ends up where there’s a huge fiscal cost attached to this for a variety of reasons, it will mean less jobs, not more jobs,” Todd continued. “It will mean less services.”

He seemed grim, though, about how soon the issue could be settled.

“We are not close to it now, based upon what the expectation is out there and what I hear from the UNW,” Todd told the House.

The GNWT is currently attempting to bring its case before the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn the Federal Court of Appeal ruling.